A comment inspired this more detailed view of how we get to brain augmentation.

Society, now and for the foreseeable future, is a rather resistant beast to change of the status quo. So I doubt any mainstream company will set out to add RAM, splice in processing units, or in any fundamental way try to change our brains. Too dangerous to get “politically incorrect” dumped on your plate.

The cell phone is how it started. And the thing will soon start to blend with the animal as it makes the internet into one of our core senses. The human animal will have taken the latest step in a long march toward “Information Animal”.

This is how it will happen.

We get the internet because everybody wants the internet, and then we get brain augmentation because it helps us get the internet. An upgrade of the familiar, that will usher in the fantastic.

We get audio first, oops, already got that in a bluetooth headset. Next we need video so we can see the internet as part of our life. I can see feeble laws trying to prohibit it while driving. Anyone want to hack their system so they can drive and converse/view at the same time? Let’s cheer on the forces of evolution and raise the wisdom quotient.

We need to get personal displays of information that are carefully honed to our needs on the job and while we play. First it comes in eyeglasses. The hot fad effect will make them cool once they have a cool purpose. We look at the real world and also get projected graphics. They already have such things, but it waits on the software to deliver the right stuff and to handle our feedback. Subvocal sounds, eye point direction and finger gestures become the input channels. All this depends on software. We are really still in the early years of internet access.

Youth picked up the phone and made it into something new. Now the phone morphs into an internet appliance and then merges with our bodies. We plateau at eyeglasses and bluetooth earphones for a moment and then the earphone disappears into the ear canal and a small, permanent version cuddles up to the ear drum and sets up shop. The eyeglasses morph into contact lens that derive their energy needs from light energy and overlay graphics onto what we see. The graphics are like the HUD of an aircraft display, delivering data from the powerful computer on our belt or purse. But the content is Internet sites filtered though our own personal filters to deliver what we want, when we want it.

I’m not talking about viewing static web pages. That is old style internet viewing. Only legacy sites preserve this mode. Modern sites deliver value that integrates into your real life. You download software into your own computer to process the internet and extract value from the torrent of noise.

The contact lens suck in more capability (software, hardware) and start to look out at the world from its own camera. It provides face recognition features and now you know everyone’s name and can see it and all the info you have on someone just by looking in their direction or seeing their name on a site.

The contact lens gains lasers and now it writes on your retina. When the artificial camera gets better than your own lens, it writes perfect images of both the real world and overlaid graphics. Now you have telephoto, infrared, high resolution vision. With overlaid Internet. Your spoken word is relayed to anyone on the planet via the Internet if you desire to make the connection.

So now you have audio and video seamlessly hooked up to the Internet. You hear and see the world and the Internet as one thing. You know whatever your software figures out is important and displays to you. This software is very important. It is smart. It becomes the Life Assistant you never knew you needed. Talk about pets! Assistant software with personality will be the rage.

Now, can you see why someone will enhance their system to embed it into their head? Get it powered by the body, protected from accidental injury. We put our own brain inside a bone case, seems like a reasonable thing to add these tools as part of our body inside the skull. A long term relationship. Probably still need a relay unit on our belt to get the signal to a cell tower. At least until the cell tower becomes part of every piece of furniture, our car, signs, or the roadway.

Once we have hardware under the skin, it is simple to make direct nerve connections. Once we have hardware connected to the nerves ( our senses and our brain ), then software transforms that hardware into brain augmentation – of the serious sort. Permanent experiential memory of what our camera eyes see. Data banks to have access to data on your job. Special function software to make you a better business man or chess player.

And on it goes.